TL;DR

Monday.com offers flexible boards and automations that teams can customize for many processes. For creative production however, that flexibility often means heavy configuration and ongoing maintenance to reach parity with production-specific features.

Kreatli is a production management platform purpose-built for brief-to-approval workflows, proxy playback, timecode comments and auditable delivery receipts. If your priority is to reduce tool count, speed up reviews, and lower producer overhead, Kreatli is usually the better single-tool fit for production teams.

Why this comparison matters

Many teams reach for highly configurable work platforms to solve production problems, because customization feels like a fast path to control. In practice, media workflows introduce requirements that generic workflow platforms do not solve out of the box, including:

• Frame-accurate review with timecode comments,

• Custom review pages for clients without forcing them to create accounts,

• Proxy-first review flows to avoid large download headaches,

• Built-in approval actions and delivery receipts that support billing and audits.

This article explains the practical tradeoffs, shows where Monday.com excels, and why a purpose-built production management platform like Kreatli often reduces operational friction and tool sprawl.

Quick product snapshot

Monday.com

Monday.com is a configurable work operating system with boards, views, automations and an app marketplace. Teams use it for project tracking, resource planning and custom workflows across marketing, engineering and operations. It scales because teams can model nearly any process, but that same openness requires implementation work and maintenance. Features Breakdown.

Strengths

• Highly configurable boards and views,

• Strong automation and integrations ecosystem,

• Good for cross-functional visibility and portfolio dashboards.

Limitations for production

• Review and playback for timecode-based media are limited,

• Requires custom builds to support proxy workflows and approval receipts,

• Clients typically need accounts or clunky guest flows for detailed review.

Kreatli

Kreatli is a production management platform built specifically for creative production. It combines project-first workspaces, proxy playback, branded review pages, timecode-pinned comments, approval gating, and delivery receipts. The product is designed to reduce the number of tools production teams must use, and to shorten the producer-to-editor-to-client feedback loop. Features Breakdown.

Strengths

• Native proxy review and timecode comments,

• Branded client review pages that do not require signups,

• Built-in approval action and delivery receipts for billing confidence,

• Templates and playbooks tuned for production work.

Limitations

• Not a generic task system for every business process, teams that need a single multi-department OS may still use other platforms for non-media workflows.

Side-by-side comparison

When Monday.com makes sense

Choose Monday.com when one or more of these are true:

• Your primary need is a single, configurable tool across multiple non-media teams, for example marketing, sales and product, and you prefer one platform for enterprise reporting.

• You have the internal resources and appetite to build and maintain custom workflows and automations for media proofing.

• Media work is a small part of your business and you prioritize consolidated tooling over production-specific UX.

If this describes your organization, Monday.com can be a pragmatic choice, provided you are prepared for the implementation and ongoing maintenance effort.

Why Kreatli is usually the better fit for creative production

For teams that spend most of their time producing video or other time-based media, Kreatli provides several direct benefits that reduce friction and tool count:

1. Proxy-first reviews, out of the box
   Producers can publish streaming proxies that play reliably in the browser. Reviewers leave timecode-pinned comments that map directly to edit actions. This removes repeated back-and-forth and reduces revision rounds.

2. Guest-friendly review pages
   Clients do not need to create accounts to review. They open a branded link, watch the proxy and click a single approval button. The approval becomes an auditable receipt captured in the project record.

3. Templates and production playbooks
   Kreatli ships with intake and review templates tuned to production workflows, so teams can move from brief to review quickly, without a months-long build phase.

These features reduce the number of separate tools producers must use, which is the central operational goal for many production teams.

Cost and time-to-value considerations

Monday.com and Kreatli use different pricing and implementation models. When budgeting, watch these signals:

• Configuration cost
  Monday.com often requires configuration time to model production processes correctly. That includes building boards, custom fields, automations, and third-party proofing integrations, which can translate to internal hours or consultant fees. Monday.com Pricing.

• Seat plus storage vs seat only
  Kreatli’s pricing focuses on production features and seat tiers, but projects that require heavy storage should budget cloud archive costs separately. Monday.com pricing is seat-based but storage and transfer may rely on connected cloud services with their own costs. Kreatli Pricing.

• Ongoing maintenance
  Generic platforms tend to accumulate custom automations that need maintenance as teams change. Purpose-built platforms reduce that maintenance overhead because the workflows are intrinsic to the product.

We recommend modeling the first-year total cost of ownership, including people time to configure and run the tooling, not just license fees.

Implementation: a recommended 30-day pilot with Kreatli

Because the purpose of Kreatli is to reduce tool count and onboard production workflows quickly, we recommend running a focused 30-day pilot using Kreatli alone, not a hybrid. The goal is to validate whether a single purpose-built platform can replace a patchwork of tools.

Week 0 - Preparation

• Identify one representative project (social spot, short promo or client edit).

• Gather the intake information and set the acceptance criteria.

Week 1 - Project setup

• Create a Kreatli project from the production template, populate the intake, and upload proxies or set up the proxy generation workflow.

• Invite internal reviewers and one client reviewer.

Week 2 - Review cycles

• Publish proxy for review, request timecode comments within a 48 hour window, consolidate comments and run a single batched edit.

• Record time-to-first-comment and number of comment items.

Week 3 - Final approval and delivery

• Capture client approval in Kreatli, record the delivery receipt, attach checksum and transfer job ID.

• Confirm the client can download or access deliverables as intended.

Week 4 - Measure and decide

• Compare KPIs against your baseline, including average review rounds, producer time spent on coordination, and client onboarding time.

• If the pilot meets your operational goals, plan a staged rollout to additional teams.

This pilot emphasizes running with Kreatli as the single production tool, to evaluate whether the platform meets your production needs without adding or integrating a generic PM tool.

Practical tips to avoid the “customization trap”

If a team insists on generic platforms for everything, they often discover hidden costs. To avoid that, follow these practical rules:

• Force a one-week proof of concept before committing to a large build in Monday.com, measure real-world review cycles not theoretical workflows.

• Avoid creating dozens of board types and views; standardize on a small set that matches production roles.

• Use a purpose-built production platform if you need reliable client review UX and approvals immediately, without heavy configuration.

FAQ

Q: Can Monday.com support frame-accurate comments with plugins?
A: Short answer is no. You can add third-party proofing apps, but this typically requires configuration and possibly paid integrations. The end-to-end experience will likely remain less streamlined than using a production tool designed for timecode workflows.

Q: Will switching to Kreatli require replacing other business tools?
A: Kreatli is intended to reduce the number of tools needed for production workflows. Teams often keep core business tools for finance or HR, but find they can retire multiple point tools for review, approvals and transfer tracking once they run production completely inside Kreatli.

Q: Does Kreatli integrate with cloud storage or transfer tools?
A: Yes, Kreatli supports integrations and webhooks to connect to transfer services and storage, so teams can automate proxy ingestion and archive deliveries while keeping the project record central.

Conclusion, summary and next step

Monday.com is a powerful, flexible work OS, and it works well for cross-functional process management when teams are prepared to invest in configuration and ongoing maintenance. For video-first production teams and agencies that want to reduce tool count, speed up reviews, and maintain auditable approvals and delivery receipts, a purpose-built production management platform like Kreatli is usually a better, faster fit. We do not recommend a hybrid approach by default, because the operational aim should be to simplify tooling where possible.